Buddy Holly

Few entertainers have exerted such a powerful and long-lasting influence on popular culture as the bespectacled Buddy Holly, a rockabilly-influenced, rock-n-roll pioneer. With his band The Crickets and groundbreaking ... Read more »

Few entertainers have exerted such a powerful and long-lasting influence on popular culture as the bespectacled Buddy Holly, a rockabilly-influenced, rock-n-roll pioneer. With his band The Crickets and groundbreaking, era-defining songs such as "That'll Be the Day," "Everyday," "Oh Boy!" "Not Fade Away" and "Peggy Sue," Holly was cited as a vital musical influence on almost every rock great who followed, including John Lennon and especially Paul McCartney. Although the singer-songwriter enjoyed less than two years of success before his untimely death at age 22 in a plane crash alongside fellow performers Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson - collectively known as "The Day the Music Died" - his impact and tragic end captured the public imagination for years. A resurgence of interest continued to loom large, most eloquently immortalized in Don McLean's end-of-U.S.-innocence anthem, "American Pie." A true legend whose amazing potential could never be fully known, Holly represented many things to many people, but at the heart of the myth and the man was his music, a magical catalog that would live forever.